Thursday, April 21, 2005

INVESTIGATION: SERBIA: MORE MACKATICA BODY BURNING REVELATIONS - IWPR

New eyewitnesses are helping to piece together a crime that stillawaits justice.

By IWPR reporters in Surdulica and Belgrade

Eyewitness accounts obtained by IWPR contain dramatic new evidence ofhow police working for Slobodan Milosevic burned truckloads of ethnicAlbanian corpses in a factory in southern Serbia during the 1999 NATOconflict.

IWPR sources have presented fresh testimony on the chronology of thecrime, the way it unfolded and the key role played by the police inboth the burnings and the cover-up that followed.

Their accounts will increase pressure on the courts to resolve themystery surrounding who these people were and who ordered theirincineration.

Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, HLC, firstrevealed the grisly secrets of the Mackatica aluminum complex, nearSurdulica, in the Pcinj district of southern Serbia, last December.

In an article in daily Danas newspaper on December 24, 2004, she saidthe factory's blast furnaces were used to burn the bodies of Albanianskilled in Kosovo on May 16 and May 24, 1999 - during the NATOconflict.

An IWPR source - a shift worker in the factory - says the whole affairstarted with the unexpected arrival at night of a number of unknowntrucks.

"Trucks with mysterious freight kept entering the factory with theirlights off. Third-shift workers, like myself, were sent home at thefactory entrance," the source said.

The IWPR source confirmed seeing the bodies arrive on two separateoccasions, "at the middle and end of May" in 1999.

"No one told us what was being transported and none of the workers hadaccess [to the place of burning]," he told IWPR. "But I know manypeople who took part in it and saw some of it myself.

"Direct participants confirmed to me what I had seen. Bodies werebrought to the factory and burned there. I was not the only one whowatched it.

"I was not present at the very act of the burning of the bodies but Icould see the trucks being unloaded.?

A second IWPR source, whose status and occupation we cannot disclose,confirmed the shift worker's version of events, saying he alsowitnessed the bodies being unloaded. This source added that the bodieswere transported from western Kosovo, mainly from Prizren, Djakovicaand Pec, and surrounding villages.

"When the trucks left [after the burning] so-called 'cleaners' tookover and checked whether any body parts or their personal belongingshad fallen onto the tarmac by the entrance to the plant,? he said.

"For days afterwards, you could smell burned flesh in Surdulica. Iknow what this smell is like, as I have been on all the battlefrontsin [the former] Yugoslavia."

This second source said Mackatica was chosen as a site because it wasclose to Kosovo, only around 170 kilometres from Prizren, and wasrelatively anonymous - few people few people outside the factory evenknew it had blast furnaces.

Kandic's Danas article said both incinerations took place aroundmidnight under tight security provided by the police's SpecialOperations Unit, JSO, then based at Bele Vode, near Vranje, insouthern Serbia.

It said the then JSO commander, Milorad ?Legija? Ulemek, now the primesuspect for the 2003 murder of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic,escorted one convoy of bodies to the site and was present as they wereburned in "furnaces numbers four and five".

According to the HLC, top police officials - some of whom are still attheir posts - organised the burnings, while other trusted Milosevicofficials organised the subsequent "cleansing of the terrain".

NEW INFORMATION ON ROLE OF MILOSEVIC?S POLICE IN THE CRIME

A third IWPR source, a former inspector in Milosevic's secret police,was active at the time of the events at Mackatica, and has assuredIWPR that the police possess "precise and systematised information" onhow the bodies were burned at Mackatica.

"There is clear data on this in local police archives, marked'strictly confidential'," this source said, referring to the twoburnings.

"The people who participated in the whole action were staying at theTheranda Hotel in Prizren. Such a job had been prepared for a longtime and could not be completed in a day or two.

"The local public and secret police know everything but this is beingconcealed also because current as well as former police officials andordinary operatives were involved.

"Everything is contained in the police documentation - from the codename of the action to the list of people who stayed at the TherandaHotel and worked on the 'sanitation of the terrain', to those wholoaded the trucks and drove them to the Mackatica factory, whereLegija and his team took over the whole thing.

"It is also known exactly who drove and who escorted the trucks withthe bodies, who was in charge of covering up the action at the factoryitself and who directly handled the furnaces during the burning."

"The names of those who were later in charge of eliminating the tracesat the factory and those whose job it was to conceal the truth fromthe local public are also known. Finally, there is a list ofpoliticians who were familiar with all of this, when the action wasbeing planned."

The former police officer claimed he knew most of these names himselfbut was fearful of divulging them publicly.

Along with all those who possessed direct knowledge of the burnings,he had encountered strong pressure to keep quiet.

"All those in any way connected to the events at Mackatica in May 1999are being exposed to threats, pressures and blackmail," he said.

"I fear for my safety and for that of my family," he said. "Theparticipants in the crime in Mackatica would know it was me whorevealed the secrets, which they are doing their utmost to hide."

IWPR's first source, the shift worker at Mackatica, says several otherwitnesses who saw the trucks with bodies entering the factory arestill out there.

"Other people know what was done, although everything was done for theoperation to be carried out in the utmost secrecy," he said.

They were all subject to threats and blackmail, he added, to preventthe story from getting further out. In spite of that, this source saidhe was ready to testify in public. IWPR has also spoken to a fourthdirect source on the events at Mackatica. This source did not wanteither his residence or job divulged but insisted he was present atboth burnings in May 1999.

"Everything took place after midnight, but I remember there was aclear sky and moonlight," he said. "I saw, for a few minutes and froma distance of about ten metres, bodies being unloaded from a truck andtransported in a large factory push-cart to the part of the factorywhere the furnaces are located."

This source said he "knew for sure" that some of the bodies were orwomen and children. He insisted he did not participate in the burning.

None of IWPR's sources was able to estimate the exact number of bodiesunloaded and burned at Mackatica, though one said they had beentransported in "more than ten trucks," which suggests a large number.

THE LIST OF NAMES BEHIND THE BURNINGS

In her article in Danas, Kandic cited several of Milosevic's mosttrusted associates as key figures behind the operation. She namedex-police minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic; a former deputy prime ministerNikola Sainovic; the then head of the public and state securityVlastimir ?Rodja? Djordjevic, and Radomir Markovic, former chief ofsecret police.

Sainovic, charged by the Hague war crimes tribunal for crimescommitted in Kosovo in 1999, voluntarily surrendered to theauthorities in spring 2003. He was released in mid-April 2005 pendingtrial.

Markovic is currently in jail in Belgrade's central prison, facingcriminal proceedings. Stojiljkovic, also on The Hague's list ofpersons indicted for crimes in Kosovo, committed suicide on April 11,2002.

Among all the names Kandic mentioned, the most interesting was that ofDjordjevic. One of four generals wanted by the Hague tribunal for warcrimes in Kosovo in 1999, he was born in Koznica, only miles fromMackatica.

Djordjevic is known to have been a key figure in the area whose wordwas virtually law. He kept all the local power structures, especiallythe police, under his control.

After the Milosevic regime fell on October 5, 2000, Djordjevicreportedly fled the country and is believed to be hiding in Russia.

THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR STARTS TO INVESTIGATE

For several months, after the publication of the groundbreakingarticle in Danas, neither the authorities nor the courts in Serbiareacted publicly to any of the grave claims that it revealed.

However, in mid-April 2005, Vladimir Vukcevic, the special stateprosecutor for war crimes, visited Surdulica.

Acting on Vukcevic's request, the investigating judge of the districtcourt in Vranje, the deputy special prosecutor and a team of speciallytrained court experts also visited Mackatica.

Vukcevic told B-92 radio he had talked to witnesses, but stressed thatmost things were still in the stage of "complete secrecy, owing to theserious nature of the procedure". The prosecution was awaiting theresult of forensic reports, he said.

Detailing the extent of the investigation thus far, he added, "Theblast furnaces at the Mackatica complex were inspected, as were theplaces where waste is deposited." He underlined that only experts'findings would confirm whether traces of human remains were in thewaste.

Vukcevic did not conceal the fact that his decision to personallyoversee the process implied a lack of confidence in the ability andwillingness of the local police to investigate the case.

He also said he regretted that a special police unit had not yet beenset up to investigate such war crimes and help the prosecution team.

An IWPR source close to the police in the Pcinj district confirmedthat the special war crimes prosecutor's initial field work inMackatica had upset members of the local police force.

"The police of the Pcinj district still operates according to the sameprinciples and mostly with the same people as it did in 1999," thissource said.

IWPR has also learned that the case would never have come to light atall if one former and one active operative from the Security andInformation Agency, BIA - successor to the State Security, DB - hadnot sent Kandic the evidence.

Zoran Stosic, head of the regional DB at the time of the Mackaticacase, was dismissed just over a month ago as general inspector ofpolice in Pcinj district and replaced by Vujica Velickovic, also a keyfigure in the regional police over the past decade. IWPR's thirdsource, the former secret police inspector, reiterated that localpolice records contained exact data on the entire affair. "All ittakes is political will for it to be disclosed," he said.

A WALL OF SILENCE IN SURDULICA

Surdulica is a small town of around 10,000 people, some ten km fromthe motorway that runs from Belgrade to Skopje. It is less than anhour's drive either to Bulgaria, or to Macedonia and Kosovo.

People in Surdulica whom IWPR interviewed either did not want to speakabout the body burnings, or defended them. No one denies somethinghappened, but in the town itself, where the hard-line nationalistSerbian Radical Party is in power, there is a conspiracy of silence.

In the cafe in the centre of town, a large piece of graffiti proclaims"Serbia for the Serbs".

A shop saleswoman was more conciliatory. "Hardly anyone dares to speakpublicly about it," was all that she would say on the grim events inthe nearby factory.

But the arrival in Surdulica of the special state prosecutor for warcrimes suggests that however much the local population wants to a drawa veil over the affair, the judicial authorities are determined toconfront this painful issue.

Whether justice will ever be done for what happened at Mackaticaremains to be seen.

Bruno Vekaric, spokesperson for the war crimes prosecutor, said itwould not be easy. The facts that the crimes were committed long agoand that the police and justice ministry were far from cooperativewere just some of the obstacles they faced, he told IWPR.

Looking at it scientificaly, one cannot deny that Serbia had a big role in causing the suffering of the past century. Yet the irony is Israel is a "friend" of this country, yet it has been the one enjoying most the genocide upon the Jewish nation.